Re: If you had a time machine...

[Erik Boehm <erikboehm07@yahoo.com>]

Not that this would adapt well to TV, but I'd like to see a very dull 
documentary, something that doesn't portray the animals as fantastic beasts, 
but rather mundane animals going about life as usual. After all back, then, it 
was life as usual, and had you lived in that time, watching a herd of sauropods 
would seem about as interesting to you as watching a herd of cattle....


As to when I'd go back in a time machine....
Well, by the cretaceous, I think the planet would look strikingly similar, 
flowering plants, bird, ants, bees, etc.
Only the Birds would have some very very big relatives moving about, and 
(assuming you have a method of travel), you could stop by and see the last of 
the temnospondyls in Australia.
If I wanted to see diversity of life, I'd go to the cretaceous, pretty much all 
the major groups alive today were present back then, and then some...

As awe inspiring as sauropods and big therepods and Pterosaurs would be.

I think the utter desolation on land of the Cambrian would be awe inspiring. 
You could walk the beach, go swimming (Anomolocarids wouldn't be dangerous to 
humans, I'm assuming), see all these weird "bugs", but you couldn't go inland 
much before facing a near complete lack of macroscopic life, how weird that 
must have been to see land nearly devoid of life.

Of course, in the Cambrian, you'd probably be screwed, can't think of a good 
way to get vitamin A&C (eat seaweed/algae?).
No wood to cook food, hope you like raw bug....

Or perhaps the late devonian- woody treelike plants would be colonizing land, 
and could provide building material, firewood, materials for making spears...

You'd be "top dog" of terrestrial fauna, fastest land animal?
Just watch out for those early tetrapods near the watering holes.... get your 
water using a clay pot on the end of a stick?

You could go inland, hiking through forrests, with no predators to worry about.
And since terrestrial life would be so new, there would probably be a lack of 
biting insects.
I hate biting insects, the bane of any vacation....

But a devonian life.... no biting insects to bug you, nothing to worry about on 
dry land, no animals to big to be taken with a simple spear, wood.

I think life in the Devonian would be good, so thats probably where I'd go if 
my time machine was a "one way ticket".

Heck, if a group of you went, you could eventually build a boat and go fishing 
for Dunkleosteus - what fun.
There wouldn't be much to ferment to make spirits, oh well.

But then I think it w


--- On Wed, 9/30/09, Augusto Haro <augustoharo@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Augusto Haro <augustoharo@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: If you had a time machine...
> To: bchoo@museum.vic.gov.au
> Cc: ddkrentz@charter.net, "Dinosaur Mailing List" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 11:02 AM
> > But should add the one thing I'd
> definately NOT want to see/hear/endure again - and thats the
> assumption that prehistoric terrestrial fauna spent the
> entire day screaming/roaring/yelling at each other at the
> top of their lungs with their mammalian larynxes (heck, even
> stem tetrapods, stem diapsids and chelicerates in Walking
> with Monsters!). Its as if predators must always loudly
> advertise their intentions to their prey prior to attacking.
> I've seen enough wild varanids and crocodylids in action to
> know you can have some riveting attack sequences combined
> with stoic silence, at least on the part of the predator.
> 
> True!. Arthropods yelling like in Lord of the Rings!!
> Yelling would
> make sense in few cases, such as an intraspecific
> confrontation, or
> intraspecific one between carnivores at a kill site. Other
> thing, no
> more exaggerated movements. Not unlikely frenetic and
> inflated
> movements in spiders killing their prey like assassins with
> more or
> less 20 stabbings. See videos of Recent spiders for
> something at least
> more approximate. And adult non amniote tetrapods (old
> "amphibians")
> should likely eat prey by swallowing it entirely, as
> Recent
> lissamphibians do, and not cutting it into pieces as in
> some WW
> documentaries.
> 
> As a carnivore fan when younger, I would also ask for some
> never-shown
> distinctive mammalian carnivores such as borhyaenoids,
> creodonts,
> mesonychids, amphicyonids, giant hyenas, Plesiogulo,
> nimravids, etc.
> showing the hunting and living stiles inferred for them.
>